SOUNDS AROUND TOWN: Hopedale's Jason Myles Goss returns to Passim

By Ed Symkus, Correspondent

Wednesday

May 16, 2018 at 9:00 AM

Singer-songwriter Jason Myles Goss isn’t afraid to admit that when he was a kid growing up in Hopedale, he wasn’t much of a Bob Dylan fan, even though Dylan was a regular presence on his dad’s turntable. But Goss, who went through a rock phase in a band before taking a more laidback acoustic route, did eventually change his mind about his dad’s favorite artist.

“When I was in my early teens and got my first guitar and started writing, that’s when I got interested in Dylan,” he said by phone from his home in Brooklyn. Goss, 36, will visit his stomping grounds, and one of his favorite places to perform, when he does a duo show with bassist Zack Hickman at Club Passim in Cambridge on May 19.

That first guitar was a Christmas present from his parents. Goss believes the genesis of that gift came from when a friend who had just gotten a guitar was showing him how to play it.

“After I that I guess I put the bug in my parents’ ear,” he said. “They got me a black-and-white starter guitar at the Music Nook in Milford. I started taking lessons, but I would also lock myself up in my bedroom and listen to all kinds of stuff. This was when grunge rock was in full swing. I was interested in what to me was these larger-than-life bands, Smashing Pumpkins in particular.”

More lessons, of a different sort, came during his tenure, in high school, with his rock band Hubris.

“This was pre-internet,” said Goss, “and the idea of sitting in the basement with loud amplifiers and making a bunch of noise was pretty much as cool as it got. We played at a school dance and it was a real learning experience. Being in a band was a great developmental way of learning to collaborate and suggest ideas and compromise and work together to create something.”

By that time, even before he left for college at Oberlin in Ohio, Goss was determined to make music a big part of his life.

“Of course you don’t know how that would pan out,” he said, “but I knew that I always wanted to, in some form, write songs and play.”

Looking back on it now, he’s not all that surprised that he shifted emphasis from being in a band to being a solo performer.

“The high school band dissipated and we went off to college, and by that point I had really gotten the writing bug,” he said. “I gravitated toward using the guitar as an instrument to write songs, and I kept writing. In college I instinctively sought out the open mics and the talent shows. I did play with some bands, but I kept doing more of those [solo] shows.”

At Oberlin, where he earned a degree in English, Goss wrote a thesis on one of his music heroes, Tom Waits. After graduating, he headed back to Massachusetts, settled in Arlington, landed some temp jobs, and “tried to learn how to get into music. I would go to the open mics at Club Passim and the Cantab, and the Center for the Arts in Natick. And I would try to put together little tours around New Hampshire and Maine. Eventually I met a girl – that’s how it always goes (laughs), who is now my wife, and I moved to New York to be with her.

“I love New York,” he added, “but the Boston music scene is really something special. There are less clubs, but the quality of music you can get seven days a week is mind-blowing. I miss that a lot.”

So he’s thrilled to be returning and playing again at Passim along with his longtime musical pal Zack Hickman. The instrumentation will likely be Goss on “some electric guitar, but my main thing, especially in that room, is acoustic guitar,” and Hickman “mainly on upright bass, and backup vocals, but maybe also playing pump organ and guitar.”

Goss is more certain of the material they’ll be playing.

“We’ll do a lot of stuff from my [2015] record ‘This Town Is Only Going to Break Your Heart,’ and I’ll probably be leaning heavily on my earlier records ‘A Plea for Dreamland’ and ‘Radio Dial.’ There should also be a few new songs.”

So does that mean he has enough material for his next album?

“No, not yet,” he said. “I’m still writing, but I feel the songs incubating. Once you can zone in on what the song is or find your way in, then the reason you finish it is …” He stopped, then laughed, then continued, “because it just bothers you and you’ve gotta finish it and get it out of your head.”